The Journey Continues – September 2018

Sorry, I’ve been away for a few weeks. I’ve had several different projects keeping me busy, but hopefully I can get some of the content I’ve been working on finished pretty soon. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to, though.

In August I spent time on both sides of the country as well as here in Atlanta providing private audio training for a few different churches. I love getting to do these, and after my time on church staff I sincerely believe these are one of the best ways to learn. There are a ton of resources available on audio these days, but I still feel there is nothing like having an expert helping you learn in your own environment within the context of your own, unique situation. Most of the visits I do range from 1-3 days, and many of my clients are seeing the value in having me return for additional audio coaching with their staff and teams. I still have a little bit of room in my schedule for a couple more of these before the end of the year if you’d like to get on my calendar. With the end of the year approaching, I can also split up the billing side of things if you’d like to spread your budget between 2018 and 2019 for a visit in 2019. Just hit my Contact page and we can chat.

Aside from traveling, the last few weeks have been keeping me pretty busy in my studio. Audio Post-Production for videos is pretty common for me, but the last couple of weeks have mixed it up a bit. For starters, I’ve been mixing an EP project for a church which has been a fun change from most of the live mixing I do. Then I also recently had the opportunity to remix the broadcast audio for one of Mt. Paran’s services featuring their youth band.

Remixing live broadcasts is an interesting challenge for me, and it’s common for me to do these on and off throughout the year. Typically these are are one-off events or special Sundays for churches. On the one hand these mixes aren’t far off from any of the other music mixing I do in my studio. However, there is usually a very short turn around time for these.

Just to give some perspective, when I’m mixing for a music release it is pretty standard to spend a day or more on a song’s mix. So a 5 song EP would probably get in the realm of 5-7 days on my calendar for mixing. These broadcast remixes of 4-5 songs usually only allow for a day, though, and that changes the game a bit. So streamlining things and focusing on the big picture is my first priority in doing these, and then I can start working on the details as much as time allows.

The other challenge with broadcast music remixes is I’m often missing the video when I’m mixing. Something that’s often misunderstood is how what we see actually influences our hearing. I’ve written a bit about this in the past, and often talk about it in workshops. The big challenge in a music mix for video is when the camera cuts to a certain instrument, our brain expects to hear that instrument. I’m pretty happy with the way the Mt. Paran remix came out from a sonic standpoint, however, I think this is a good example where I probably would have made some different mix decisions if I’d had the video as a reference.

Here’s the video if you’d like to check it all out. You might have to click over to Vimeo to watch it, though.

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Dave, I would be interested on more info about your remixing of live services. This is something that I do each week as we air a “tape delay” on the radio (we also used the audio on our service videos that we post each week). I have developed a fairly good system and work flow but I’m always looking for ways to make it better and continue to improve my end product. Hearing some of your process in some future posts would be great.